PersonaNonData

Repost: The New Publishing Experience: Build Your Own Book

Published on 2010-08-27 00:26:00

Originally posted July 10, 2007.Traveling to a new location for vacation (and sometimes business) can be an exciting event and generally a lot of planning goes into the effort so you make the best use of your time. Often building your ideal itinerary may necessitate the purchase of several travel guides (or in my case diligent note taking in the cafe at BN) and I can only imagine that this situation is even more relevant if you travel as a family. Having had a great time - and probably seeing on

Ford Prefect Warwickshire 1963

Published on 2010-08-26 00:44:00

A weekly image from my archive. Click on the image to make it larger.I really like this photo. This is a Ford Prefect 107E and the first car my parents bought after they got married. They tell me they were traveling back from Leamington, where I was born, to Manchester to see the parents. I must be in the back seat. You can just about see my Mother on the other side of the open door. My father is still convinced that Ford's never start first time in the cold and it must come from this t

SpringerLink adds Semantic Search: Cross search eBooks, Journals and Reference.

Published on 2010-08-25 06:14:00

Announced by Springer from their press release: Upgraded Springer site connects eBooks and journals through semantic linking and provides digital content previews Springer has relaunched its online platform SpringerLink ( www.SpringerLink.com ), which hosts nearly five million documents, including eBooks, journals and reference works. The redesigned site has a new and fresh concept that includes semantic linking and connects related content across eBooks and journals. SpringerLink now

Frankfurt Seminar: Marketing your books in the digital marketplace

Published on 2010-08-24 13:58:00

Livres Canada Books is hosting a seminar on Tuesday Oct 5th and here is their description of the event:Find out what publishers in Canada and other markets are doing to sell and promote books in an increasingly digital marketplace. Join Livres Canada Books on the afternoon of Tuesday October 5, 2010 at the Frankfurt Book Fair for an International Digital Rights Symposium. The symposium allows Canadian and international publishers to work together to develop partnerships, encourage rights

Understanding Net Neutrality

Published on 2010-08-24 10:28:00

From CCC's on going series beyond the book:Wondering whether you should care about “net neutrality” or are you even just a little bit puzzled about exactly what is “net neutrality”? Chris Kenneally went to Marc Strohlein, Chief Agility Officer for publishing analyst firm Outsell, for a straight take on what may be the sleeper issue of the year for publishing and media companies.Link to the podcast.

Media Week (Vol 3) No 34: Jack London, Philosophy Books & Selling. (And Twitter Highlights)

Published on 2010-08-22 18:38:00

Jack London covered by The Independent:But perhaps the greatest act of historical castration is of Jack London. This man was the most-read revolutionary socialist in American history, agitating for violent overthrow of the government and the assassination of political leaders – and he is remembered now for writing a cute story about a dog. It's as if the Black Panthers were remembered, a century from now, for adding a pink tint to their Afros. If Jack London is chased foreve

Repost: Roger and Me

Published on 2010-08-20 00:39:00

Originally posted April 30th, 2008. Speaks for itself.I have no direct connection with Roger Clemens but I did admire him. In the mid-1980's I lived in Boston and it coincided with the time when he came up to the big leagues. When I finished my shift at the Museum of Fine Arts (the work was brutal), I generally walked home around the Public Gardens (making sure to stay out of them so as not to get mugged - that came later). During those summer evenings in 1984, through the heavy moist air, I co

Floating Wreck: HMS Queen Elizabeth 1 Hong Kong 1972

Published on 2010-08-19 00:41:00

A weekly image from my archive. Click on the image to make it larger.Another old liner photo but this time a more ignominious end to the star of the Cunard line HMS Queen Elizabeth. The ship had been sold by Cunard and was being refit in Hong Kong as a floating university. The work was almost completed when a fire broke out and the ship was completely destroyed. The ship then lay on its side in the harbor as seen here for months while the owners haggled with the insurance company over wha

PND Technology: KnowMore

Published on 2010-08-18 09:51:00

This is week three in my recap of some of the interesting technology I've heard about at the tech meet-ups I've been going to (NYTech)Knowmore is still in beta but it looks promising and interesting to anyone who juggles many social networking relationships. And increasingly that is many of us.Knowmore has created on view of all your social network relationships and presents that content in various streams that you as a user establish. (Here is the video but sadly the audio is bad but good eno

Series: Content Curation

Published on 2010-08-17 10:12:00

Over the past two months, I've looked at content curation as a theme and I thought I would summarize my posts. As I've mentioned, the practice of curation is not a new one as any librarian, or television program director or editor could attest; however, as media outlets become ubiquitous and content becomes overwhelming the need for better curation is vastly under-estimated as a business model and a consumer need.My posts on this issue are as follows:The Curator and the Docent:Recently, as I wa

Media Week (Vol 3) No 33: Lynd Ward, Report on eBooks in Libraries, OCLC WMS, Arcade Fire

Published on 2010-08-15 08:30:00

From the Seattle PI Blog:In what just might be one of the publishing surprises and hi-spots of 2010, The Library of America will release a 2 volume boxed set featuring the six woodcut novels of Lynd Ward.God's Man, Ward's first book published on the eve of the stock market collapse of 1929, was the first wordless book-length novel to be published in the United States. By the end of 1937 Ward would publish five more novels in woodcuts:Madman's Drum (1930)Wild Pilgrimage (1932)Prelude to a M

Repost: Book Insurance

Published on 2010-08-13 00:03:00

Originally posted July 14, 2009.Few in the book world can see an end to DRM on book content even as glimmers of a new dawn in the music world seem to indicate there may be a different future on the horizon from the one that book publishers are trying so desperately to avoid. Rampant file sharing and ineffectual (even legal) efforts to halt copyright infringement represents the atomic winter that consumer book publishers fear and thus they believe the only way to preclude that future is to do im

Ironwork Escape: New York 1993

Published on 2010-08-12 00:38:00

A weekly image from my archive. Click on the image to make it larger.The iron work hangs on many of these lower east side buildings like decorative ornaments. Oddly there aren't any air conditioners in any of the windows.

PND Technology: twilio

Published on 2010-08-11 00:47:00

This is week two of my recap of some of the interesting technology I've heard about at the tech meet-ups I've been going to (NYTech)Over the years, I've had the dubious distinction of being responsible for several office moves and, aside from the bickering over who gets the bigger office and what type of furniture we buy, some of the more problematic issues related to dealing with the old telephone pbx. Twilio can't help with the baser issues but they have eliminated the hardware problems inher

Curating Research Data at Elsevier

Published on 2010-08-10 00:22:00

Elsevier announced a partnership with Pangaea which is a 'data library' that links primary research data with journal articles in earth and environmental science. As I mentioned last week, information and academic publishers like Elsevier have long organized themselves around content areas but are now 'widening' their content 'silos' to accommodate tools, techniques and proprietary data provided by third parties. This is a good example of how the Elsevier 'platform' can and is being leveraged

Investment in the library leads to grant funding

Published on 2010-08-09 12:33:00

Elsevier conducted a research study to determine the value of an academic library to the institution and concluded that there is a strong correlation between investment and the ability to generate grant income (press release) Of the 8 institutions participating from around the globe, 6 demonstrated a greater than one-to-one (1:1) return in grant funding, with results ranging from 15.54:1 to 0.64:1. Equally significant is the result that 2 institutions showed a significant positive correlation

Media Week (Vol 3) 32: End of Print, Education, Dom DeLillo, Quercus, Changing Libraries,

Published on 2010-08-07 22:33:00

Media Week (Vol 3) 32: End of Print, Education, Changing Libraries,Contemplating the end of print books in Newsweek:Paperbacks and public libraries made books cheap or free but certainly available to millions who might otherwise not have been able to afford them, and all that happened long before I was born. Nevertheless, I was brought up by people who had been taught—and who taught me—that books were valuable things, things to be cared for and cherished, and I have owned some volumes f

Inside Google Books: Books of the world, stand up and be counted! All 129,864,880 of you.

Published on 2010-08-06 06:15:00

Google takes a stab at counting all the books in the world: Google.Our definition is very close to what ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers) are supposed to represent, so why can’t we just count those? First, ISBNs (and their SBN precursors) have been around only since the mid 1960s, and were not widely adopted until the early-to-mid seventies. They also remain a mostly western phenomenon. So most books printed earlier, and those not intended for commercial distribution or printed

Repost: Digital Platforms & Distribution

Published on 2010-08-06 00:06:00

Originally posted April 12, 2007Over the last 100 years (probably) US publishers have dithered over whether to use their facilities for the exclusive warehouse, fulfillment and distribution of their books or to offer 'publisher services' to other publishers. In recent years we have seen as many large publishers give up publisher services as adopt them. Some publishers think the headaches out weigh the potential marginal income and others in turn believe these publisher service functions to be co

OCLC Respond to Skyriver Suit

Published on 2010-08-05 14:55:00

Sent to OCLC members this afternoon:On July 29, SkyRiver Technology Solutions and Innovative Interfaces, Inc. filed suit against OCLC, alleging anticompetitive practices. We at OCLC believe the lawsuit is without merit, and we will vigorously defend the policies and practices of the cooperative. OCLC’s General Counsel, working with trial counsel, will respond to this regrettable action by SkyRiver and Innovative Interfaces following procedures and timetables dictated by the court. This pr

Beirut: Overhead 1972

Published on 2010-08-05 00:24:00

A weekly image from my archive. Click on the image to make it larger.This photo was taken in 1972 from yet another Pan Am plane window and clearly shows the famous corniche that fronts the city. Beirut was referred to as the Paris of the middle east in the 1950s and 60s because it was so cosmopolitan. On this journey we only stopped for fuel but in 1968, the family spent two days here on the way to our first overseas home in Bangkok. If my navigation is correct one of those hotels in the ce

PND Technology: Parse.ly

Published on 2010-08-04 07:26:00

Frequent readers will recall that I occasionally report on my attendance at the New York Tech meet-up which is a once a month showcase of new and interesting technology and applications in early development (mostly). I also recently attended a similar group meeting in Hoboken and I am considering reporting on what I find interesting at these meetings on a more regular basis. So here goes.I am interested in curated content and Parse.ly is a product that helps content owners curate content for

Confusing a Silo with a Business

Published on 2010-08-03 00:34:00

The strategy of organizing content around a common topic such as legal or medical information is mature in information publishing. As other publishers mimic the strategy of organizing their content into silos they would be wise not to confuse their efforts with community building or market making. Users are interested in accessing validated, useful and important topical information but this could just as easily be web based content as it is published content. Often it is just that.Whereas inf

Media Week (Vol 3) 31: Swedish Reality Policing, Mockingbird, Twain, OCLC, Follet, Watches and Copyright

Published on 2010-07-31 14:42:00

The Observer suggests that Candace Bushnell started it all - chick lit that is (Observer):Before Candace Bushnell, books like Gould's that sought to capture the dilemmas and dichotomies of modern womanhood with a wry, humorous honesty, were almost unheard of. For decades, the experiences of ordinary women had been largely overlooked by the literary world: either it was recounted in fictional terms (as in Mary McCarthy's The Group) or it was relayed anonymously by feminist polemicists and soc

Repost: Presuming No Book

Published on 2010-07-30 03:53:00

Originally posted on 2/17/09:Henry Ford said “They can have any color as long as it’s black” and, in so doing, summed up what industrial production is all about. What we gain in scale, we ultimately lose in choice becoming - in the process - beholden to the manufacturer to deliver to us what they believe we desire. Manufacturing has obviously come a long way since the age of Henry Ford, and a few industries have even become so flexible that consumers sometimes don’t believe they are re